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New raptor species named and on display at ROM

After a “lucky” discovery in Montana, ROM paleontologist David Evans says the new raptor is a missing piece of Cretaceous history.

Jawbones estimated to be 66 million years old and now on display at the Royal Ontario Museum, are considered to belong to a newly discovered meat-eating, birdlike dinosaur. They provide valuable clues to the mysteries of dinosaur evolution. (Royal Ontario Museum)

The newly discovered meat-eating raptor as it appears in an artist's interpration. (Courtesy Danielle Dufault)

Shortly after paleontologist David Evans saw the 66-million-year-old jawbones, he realized he was looking at a long-sought clue of dinosaur evolution.

The ROM scientist was travelling through Fort Peck, Mont., when he heard through his network of dinosaur researchers and amateurs that an important specimen had been found in the Hell Creek Formation, about 150 kilometres away, by an American private collector.

“I instantly knew it was a new kind of raptor,” said Evans, curator of vertebrate paleontology at the ROM.

“It’s the youngest-known raptor dinosaur and it lived with Tyrannosaurus rexand triceratops. This discovery contributes to our understanding of the ecosystem right before the Great Extinction event at the end of the age of dinosaurs,” he said Monday, the same day the jawbones went on display at the museum.

After the ROM acquired the specimens for an undisclosed amount, the next three years were spent determining if Evans was correct in believing this was an unnamed species. The results of that research were published in the latest edition of the journal Naturwissenschaften with co-authors Phillip Currie, a professor at the University of Alberta, and Derek Larson, a graduate student at the University of Toronto.

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The newly named Acheroraptor temertyorum is a close cousin of the more familiar velociraptor, which lived in Asia. Other raptor cousins may have roamed North America as well, but didn’t make it to the end of the Cretaceous period.

Acheroraptor means “Acheron plunderer” and is derived from Acheron, the River of Pain in Greek mythology, which reflects the Hell Creek origin of the fossils.

“Raptor” means “plunderer” in Latin and refers to a group of small, carnivorous dinosaur species. “Temertyorum” is a nod to James and Louise Temerty, longtime ROM benefactors.

If a velociraptor was the size of a German shepherd, Acheroraptor temertyorum was more like a Great Dane, Evans said.

Except it was likely covered in feathers, had sharp claws and wing-like appendages. It had a long, snouted skull and daggerlike ridged teeth, perfect for eating triceratops eggs planted in what was then a swampy, coastal plain. The trademark ridged teeth had been recognized by scientists for years, but were not enough to uncover how the Hell Creek raptor fit into the branch of the family tree containing birdlike dinosaurs.

Since it’s biologically similar to Asian raptors, the finding also helps prove there was a two-way migration of species between Asia and North America in the latter part of the Cretaceous period, Evans said.

“The acheroraptor gives us some tantalizing evidence that we actually had a number of Asian species come back across the Bering Strait in the last five million years of the age of dinosaurs.”

Because of U.S. laws that allow private collectors to trade and hold onto rare fossils that in Canada are considered part of the national trust, it’s unknown if there are other such important discoveries that remain unexamined by experts.

“This is a case where the private collector was very happy to work with the museum when I told him the significance of the find,” Evans said.

The anonymous amateur collector had managed to maintain much of the collection data — “it isn’t perfect, but it’s good” — like the rock bed it was found in. That information is sometimes lost when excavation firms and not scientists recover the ancient fossils.

In 100 years of prospecting for dinosaur bones in the Hell Creek Formation, these fossils are the most complete set of meat-eater jaws ever found, Evans said.

“That speaks to the extreme rarity of these dinosaurs in the fossil record, and just how significant these bones are.”

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